Cultivating

[Jemini]

The same can be said about any other genre there is. Countless retelling of anything would be boring, as would xianxia or Harry Potter or Eragon.

Just because bad authors write bad stories about xianxia doesn't mean that xianxia is inherently a creatively exhausted genre.

See my response to Axiom above.

 

[OliviaMyriad]

Not the main problem. The main problem is, how does the protagonist face adversity? How does the protagonist get challenged? Because they are part of a sect, they are protected against most of the external dangers that could actually make the story interesting. Therefore, you need to either come up with contrived ways for the protections of the sect to fail or come up with some kind of internal drama from within the sect. There's only a limited number of ways you can do either, and with so many people writing Xianxia you are going to exhaust those limited number of ways extremely fast.

Again, that's a non-issue. There comes a time where every person has to leave the protection of the sect and travel to experience the world. The chinese term for it is 历练 and it's for the purposes of giving them life experience and so they're not just husks with power. If you don't know about this, you haven't been reading since it's pretty ubiquitous in xianxia. The default answer to "why am I stuck at a bottleneck in my cultivation" is basically "get the fuck out of the sect and go see the world."

Some people go alone, some people go with friends. That far away from the protection of their sects, these people must rely on their own wits to survive because no one is there to protect them.

Even if they don't go out alone, you should know about the secret realms that are present in basically every novel. You know, the dungeon-like things that appear and becomes a free-for-all inside at the end?

Basically, sect life is just a small part of a person's experiences. The protection of a sect isn't as solid as you think it is, and killing someone from a sect isn't actually that dangerous unless you're careless and gets caught. In the novels I've read, most of the time, the protagonist leaves a witness behind/just injures the sect member and that's how they get new enemies. Just don't be stupid.

I'm starting to suspect you don't actually read xianxia or you just read a few of the generic ones and decided you know everything.

 

[Jemini]

I'm starting to suspect you don't actually read xianxia or you just read a few of the generic ones and decided you know everything.

I read just enough to see they were basically clones of each other, with very little deviation. I can tell you are pretty deep into the genre.

I will put it like this. It's like whether or not you like metal music. If you like metal music and you are listening to Iron Maiden, you would never ever say that Run to the Hills sounds anything like The Number of the Beast. However, if you are someone who either doesn't like metal music or you are someone listening from the next room and can't hear the exact lyrics, all you hear is the heavy guitar riffs and some screaming, which actually do sound pretty similar between the two songs.

You are too close to this, you don't see how the more casual reader really does see them all as just the same story over and over and over again.

Granted, same can be said of your standard escapist power-fantasy self-insert Isekai. Then again, the escapist power-fantasy self-insert variety is pretty heavily derided as well and there are better written answers to it within the wider Isekai genre. In much the same way, the outside community has come to view Xianxia within the cultivation genre the same as people view escapist self-insert power-fantasy within the Isekai genre.

EDIT: Also, as the OP of this thread has complained, the negative view of Xianxia in particular has also tainted the entirety of cultivation as a concept. My main argument here is to go the furthest away from Xianxia as possible in the form of western-written cultivation novels in order to rehabilitate cultivation as a concept because the bad writing in Xianxia has become a poison by association for a lot of people. If you can't acknowledge that, you are only going to keep banging your head against the wall as you face more and more discussions just like this one.

The main difference is, I am a rather reasonable person and have taken the time to lay out clearly what my complaints are. The next guy you talk to is not going to be as reasonable, and if you take the same attitude you are taking here then the only thing you are going to do is piss them off. You are not going to change their mind, you are just going to make them angry and make them dig in their heels deeper.

Isekai has faced the same issue due to self-insert power-fantasies. It managed to escape from that trap with genre breakdowns like Re:Zero and Kono Suba, as well as some that are just plain incredibly well written like Overlord. The cultivation world style works need to find a way to do the same. You do that by acnowledging not only the genuine faults, but also the perceived faults even if you don't entirely agree they are problems. You need authors to start running PR for the genre. The western-written cultivation world novels are the only ones really doing this right now. (and a large portion of that is because a lot of the western writers of these novels actually fully agree these things are problems.)

 

[Jemini]

Again, that's a non-issue.

Let me put it to you another way, going on my previous post.

I bet we can go through a little exercise here. You name what you think is a genuinely good Xianxia novel. I will name what I think is a genuinely good Atari game. Something like Pong or Snake. I bet I could come up with just as many good Atari games as you can Xianxia novels.

I am not saying to seriously go through this exercise. My point in this is that Atari, and the rest of the 2nd console generation along with it, crashed completely due to shovelware games. One bad game after another just being pumped out on the cheap and saturating the market. It was to the point it completely crowded out the good examples of the genre.

These shovelware games caused consumers to loose confidence in electronic home gaming consoles, and it crashed the video game industry completely.

The way video games came back onto the scene and why they are so popular today is because Nintendo played PR for video games by trying to put out the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and marketed it as a toy instead of a video game console. They were making a video game console, but in their marketing they tried to make it seem as unlike a video game console as they could possibly get away with. That's why the NES was a front-loader, even though from a technical perspective it was better to make it a top-loader like literally every other cartage loader game system. They wanted to imitate VCR tapes.

That is how Nintendo revitalized the video game industry. They tried to market themselves as literally not video games, even though they were exactly that.

Right now, even if Xianxia does have good quality stories in it, it's heavily and almost irredemably tainted. The only hope for the genre is the writers who try to distance themselves from the Xianxia formula as much as possible while only keeping the cultivation concept. These people then need to write some very very good stories using the cultivation concept.

Exactly that is going on right now in western-written cultivation novels, and those ones are actually gaining quite a bit of success. Perhaps at some point some Xianxia concepts can start getting re-integrated after writers have taken notes from what the western-written model is doing right now.

 

[OliviaMyriad]

I was never talking about the perception of xianxia but refuting your claims. I think I've done pretty well if you've gone to perception rather than the substance of the genre (and more specifically the sect) part.

I read just enough to see they were basically clones of each other, with very little deviation. I can tell you are pretty deep into the genre.

I will put it like this. It's like whether or not you like metal music.

So basically what I'm getting from this is that you don't actually know xianxia that well and you're just biased because you don't like it.

I can also name as many good isekai/fantasy/scifi/detective as you can name good atari games. As for xianxia being tainted...that's not particularly true. People who like xianxia still like it and there are a lot of them. It's also only in the western hemisphere that xianxia is "tainted". It's only growing in CN as well as constantly changing. Same trash there, so why do they like it? Do they just have worst taste?

The truth is, you don't need a shake up to "untaint" xianxia because it's not tainted. That's just your opinion.

It's just a given that western-theme cultivation would jibe well with western readers. I'm willing to bet that xenophobia is the reason eastern-themed ones will never be mainstream here beside a few. They just can't get used to the eastern setting and values.


Also, you misquote me about " Again, that's a non-issue. "

I was specifically talking about how you claim that sects eliminate protagonist adversity. I'm saying that it's not really a problem.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I'm a little bit surprised, that discussion went on, and nobody mentioned Deathblade. If someone did, I apologize and ask for forgiveness, I didn't see that. Deathblade is a translator of Chinese novels I don't remember the exact novels he translates, but he specializes in a Wuxia, Xianxia, and Xuanhuan. He has a youtube channel where he answers some of the reader's questions. He lived in China for some time and talked with many authors of the novels in said genres. And he can give a better understanding of what exactly are these genres. Maybe his videos would answer more of your question, depending on what you want to learn, and if he has covered it.

 

[ChronicleCrawler]

So, let me start this by saying I hate Xianxia. They almost always follow a similar premise and its typically a shitty one at that. Once you've read one, you've most likely read them all. Even the ones people say are cool tend to be shit. Sovereign of the Three Realms was supposed "the coolness"....but no it sucked too. It was a carbon copy of countless others. People also say the ones by I Eat Plants is good but....no. He's one of the worst offenders in my eyes. The only ones I haven't attempted that people are raving about is Coiling Dragon and Against The Gods, but I'm concerned about trying because I just don't think I'm a fan of the genre. I don't think I CAN be satisfied with it, even good ones.

Also, I can't find Coiling Dragon anywhere that isn't trying to sell it instead. WuxiaWorld removed it from free to read and is now selling it on Amazon and NU's version is mostly WuxiaWorld links so oh well. I was too late.

It might just be me, and not the genre itself. There is another one people raved about but I honestly can't remember it. Something to do with Black Powder or something. Black Powder Empire or Gun Powder Empire? Idk I can't remember the name. Maybe one of you guys know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, my point here is to mention that my distaste for Xianxia is ironic seeing as the thing I've been working on in the background, that after a little over a month of plotting it out, it's starting to resemble a cultivation novel. Not in the most specific sense, but it's starting to resemble it in certain aspects. Meditation is a thing. Clans are a thing. Not sects though, I've never really liked that word. Sect. I've also started plotting potential wars and am running into the same problems Xianxia does. You can't have a war if one person is strong enough to bring the smackdown on an entire army alone. That was one thing that always irritated the piss out of me about Xianxia wars. It was never a war. Just one guy flexing his muscles and cutting thousands down at a time.

It's just ironic is all. Oh well. It's going to start slow paced anyway. 13k words down so far.

Really ironic that I genre I've insulted constantly, (which I'm now concluding it might also be me personally not liking and not just the genre having problems) is kind of taking over my behind-the-scenes thing.

Everything can be good until you repeat everything to oblivion. Once xianxias, wuxias do that - bridges are bound to get burned. I started reading emperor's domination for the longest time. Believe me, until now its still not ending. Never, nadda, no, heck. Even so sometimes, I do crave for it - then 'the mehs' history. The goodies that was good enough to make me happy till the end is the Coiling Dragons and I Shall Seal the Heavens. Though there's bound to be a lot of boring times (what can we expect from a millions of word-wordfest?), I can say that I was happy about a lot of its scenes (not all).

 

[MarkofWisdom]

Everything can be good until you repeat everything to oblivion. Once xianxias, wuxias do that - bridges are bound to get burned. I started reading emperor's domination for the longest time. Believe me, until now its still not ending. Never, nadda, no, heck. Even so sometimes, I do crave for it - then 'the mehs' history. The goodies that was good enough to make me happy till the end is the Coiling Dragons and I Shall Seal the Heavens. Though there's bound to be a lot of boring times (what can we expect from a millions of word-wordfest?), I can say that I was happy about a lot of its scenes (not all).

ED is still ongoing? Good lord it’s been running for years at this point. I think I dropped off somewhere before ch 2000 when he had set most things up in the lower world and was basically undisputed ruler, then was planning on going to the upper world. ED is actually a fair example of what I find ends up often being the biggest issues with the genre, though that may be less from the genre itself, but rather how it’s often sold/written now-paid for by the word count and with strong incentives to never end the story.

The stories often have very good/strong starts and are well written and detailed, but fall apart into vagueness and repetition once they reach the end of what they had planned or the author gets tired of the series, but have to continue the story for whatever reason -contract, wanting the popular series to continue being a source of money, popular demand, etc. As an example of a similar thing happening to a different form of media-if I remember correctly I think Dragon Ball Z was intended to end earlier than it did, possibly at the end of the Android/Cell arc, but popular demand/higher ups (not sure which or the exact combination) ended up having the story continue after that. The Buu arc is fairly hit or miss with people from the reactions and discussions about it I’ve seen, as was Gohan’s character growth during the Cell arc getting undone as he decides he doesn’t need to bother training anymore to keep the earth safe since Goku is dead, and the Buu arc ends up with Goku once again being the star of the show despite seeming on having intended to pass the mantle to Gohan after the Cell arc

It’s possibly just a cultural values difference, but the importance placed on face/reputation and the refusal to admit mistakes or not knowing when to drop things causes a lot of the conflicts in the story to escalate into blood feuds or ends with the total extermination of the enemy side. Often those conflicts are started by some arrogant brat from one of the local sects or powerful families attacking or antagonizing random people, and one of them ends up fighting back or being from a group powerful enough to fight back or stomp the brat’s sect/family


Repetition really is something the longer series have an issue with. MC goes to new area, meets one or two locals they get along with, Arrogant Young Master 234 from the Big Ego Sect shows up out of nowhere and either wants to kidnap some female character (Local or from the MC’s group), steal something MC has, or to kill the MC because the MC didn’t kiss their ass hard or fast enough. This causes MC to defend themself, injuring or killing AYM, or running away and for AYM or AYM’s senior to swear vengeance on them, causing MC to now have a blood feud with the Big Ego Sect. MC powers up a bit, has local allies help him, or finds some shiny new weapon to beat the sect with. Cue sequence of ascending order of threats as senior 1, senior senior 2, senior senior senior 3, and probably all the way up to their founder/old ancestor coming out to try and kill MC for injuring their face/reputation and for not obediently letting themself be killed. Bonus points if all the Big Ego Sect seniors call the MC arrogant for fighting back against them or say how dare they defend themself. Extra bonus round if some of them actually acknowledge their side started it, it isn’t really the MC’s fault except for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time, but insist they have to continue the blood feud because it’s gone too far now or because their reputation would suffer if their sect wasn’t able to kill a single person/small group.

Arc ends with the Big Ego Sect either getting dissolved/becoming subservient if they’re lucky, or more likely their extermination as they refuse to drop the feud until every last one of them is dead. Various ending speeches, MC possibly powers up again, waves goodbye to local friends and moves on to the next place, leaving behind most/all of the new characters from that arc.

Cue repetition in the new area, but this time with AYM 235 from the Bigger Ego Sect being the one to start the blood feud. Bonus points if the Bigger Ego Sect is related to the Big Ego Sect somehow-either a parent sect or main branch of whatever offshoot sect the Big Ego Sect was. Same type of drama, just with new names and faces, higher power levels, bigger numbers, flashier moves, fancier weapons, and a higher body count.

A personal gripe I have with the wuxia, xianxia, and xuanhuan genres is that often the side/supporting characters are basically deleted from the story or rendered entirely obsolete after their intro arc ends. Childhood friends or people who the MC gets close to in the early worlds/locations basically drop off the face of the planet once the power tiers start ticking up since they can’t keep up with the MC unless those side characters also have some secret super inheritance or one in a billion lucky chance encounter. Even then they rarely are actual equal participants/peers, often just ending up as cheerleaders or hostages to use against the MC. A similar thing happened in DBZ-towards the end of the series basically anyone who isn’t Goku or Vegeta is reduced to a cheerleader or potential hostage. It turns into a recurring issue where new characters are introduced, are involved in one or a few arcs, then completely disappear into irrelevance once the MC and plot have moved on. The consistent cast ends up being reduced to just the MC, maybe a friend/rival or two that can keep up with the MC, and possibly the super tier teacher the MC may have, meaning there is little point in getting attached to new characters or places the MC goes to since they’ll probably be dropped as soon as the arc ends. If the childhood friends do manage to stick around and stay relevant you may end up with something silly like they’re *all* the reincarnations of dead god tier cultivators who were friends in their past lives too

A lesser gripe I have is that often it’s basically just the MC that has to struggle for everything while everyone around them has stuff handed to them in a platter. Stuff like MC has to go out into a volcano and fight a lava monster to get some shiny rock to power up with, while childhood friends 1 and 2 and rival 1 are handed super tier power boosts and get to the same power level MC reaches while getting to sit comfy in their home base. Or MC struggles to reach some high power level and some new character shows up, finds/is given some uber power and instantly reaches the same level.


I will say that sometimes the MC’s constant struggle is used to their advantage since they’re battle hardened and have a lot more combat experience than their peers who were given power ups without fighting for them, but other times the lazy sect young masters and mistresses are just as powerful and battle capable as the MC is even without going through the same struggles.

wow this comment got a *lot* longer than I expected it to

 

[The_LivingLegend]

One of my favorite cultivation novels is World's Apocalypse Online. It not really strictly xanxia but more like xanxia combined with fantasy, space, tech, and reincarnation (he reincarnates into his old self.). Its a really nice novel that even at the beginning is super different from any general xanxia novels, and this is especially so for in the middle of the novel where it really becomes its own unique thing.